An Angel's Fall
by The Feather Mage
Summary: "Tell me, Sumeragi... How does it feel to have him inside of you?" Fuuma smirked. /Based on the Mangá, post-Seishirou's Death. FuumaxSubaru, plus other pairings! No Kamui, sadly... COMPLETE! Rated M for some adult language.
1. Chapter 1

X belongs to CLAMP. All my fics are for entertainment purposes only. Do not be fooled into believing otherwise.

**This fic is not my work!** I found this in a Fuuma fansite called _As you wish_, and decided to post this here,

**because this was too much gold to ignore!**

**All praises go to the author behind this.**

Included pairings: Fuuma X Subaru/Subaru X Seishirou/Fuuma X Seishirou/Fuuma X Kakyou

**NO Shirou-kun, sadly... T.T  
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><p><strong>An Angel's Fall<strong>_**  
>Prologue<strong>_

He opened his eyes slowly, and the light invaded his senses. It blinded him at first; he had become used to moving in half as much.

He had become used to the ever-present hint of darkness.

"Tell me, Sumeragi..." the low, velvet voice caressed his senses, like a feather tickling in his ears. The tone was insolent, suggestive, as were the words that followed "How does it feel to have him inside of you?"

Vague shapes coalesced into discernable forms he could name. The owner of the voice stood in front of him, golden eyes intent on his above the frames of stylish and quite useless glasses, a hint of a lopsided smirk on the sensuous mouth.

"Whatever's left of him, of course." He continued in that smooth tone that somehow tittered on the edge of being vulgar. "Is it everything you remember it to be? Full eyesight, I mean."

Sumeragi Subaru ignored the question, not feeling any particular desire to indulge the young man before him. Instead he fished inside the pocket of his trenchcoat for a box of cigarettes. He didn't acknowledge the other's presence until he'd lit one and taken his first drag off it.

"Why are you still here? You've seen that Seishirou's Wish was granted, your presence here serves no continued purpose. Fuuma."

Throwing in the name was an afterthought, almost insulting in its casualness. Fuuma's half-smile didn't falter at it, but his eyes flashed for an instant before regaining their honeyed amusement.

"Doesn't it? You're the sakurazukamori now, and one of the Dragons of Earth. Since I am Kamui, I thought I would serve as the welcoming committee."

"How very thoughtful of you." He replied, insincerity plain in his voice.

"My pleasure, Subaru."

It had been calling him for some time now.

Subaru had first heard the tree's whispers shortly after Rainbow Bridge, while he'd sat contemplating the advantages of catatonia in his room at the mansion at CLAMP Campus. More than anything else, it had been the shock of realizing what those faint echoes were that had kept him from lapsing into welcome, mindless oblivion.

Shock had faded fairly quickly once he stopped to think about it; afterall, Seishirou had told him the manner in which /he/ had become the sakurazukamori. At first he'd braced himself against what he'd assumed would be an attack on his consciousness, but the whispers remained at the edge of his awareness, just beyond the threshold of comprehension, and he felt no need to either block or seek out their source. He supposed it must have something to do with the fact that he hadn't actually /intended/ to take Seishirou's life, that, in fact, he had been a sort of suicide weapon in the older man's hand.

The tree was undoubtedly confused by the irregularities surrounding the death of the last sakurazukamori.

Fuuma's words of warning as he'd offered him the flask containing Seishirou's left eye had confirmed Subaru's speculations.

"Accepting this means you're accepting the powers of the sakurazukamori as well."

He wondered if Seishirou had known he would have to /choose/ to accept, and what his intentions had been if he had. The assassin had long since marked Subaru as his prey, to do with as he wished. He'd claimed the right to impose on him either death or life, and he had also been dictating the specifics of Subaru's continued existence for some time now. Since he was a six year-old boy, to be exact.

And so it had come as somewhat of a surprise that in the end, Seishirou had, whether he'd planned it or not, left this final choice entirely up to Subaru.

/Do you, Sumeragi Subaru, accept this man as your everything and your master, now that death has finally done you apart?/

Evidently, he did.

"You know," Fuuma's velvet voice once again intruded on his silence "I keep thinking about this, and I keep coming back to the conclusion that walking around Tokyo in a white, blood-stained coat just /can't/ be one of your better ideas."

Subaru's eyes flickered briefly to his companion, but he didn't bother to dignify the comment with a response. After several hours in his company, the former Seal had come to the conclusion that Fuuma /enjoyed/ trying to get under his skin. Subaru got the distinct impression that he thought it was funny. No one had told /him/ that the Dark Kamui had a sense of humor.

Fuuma was unfazed by the silence, and opted for taking it up a notch instead. He hooked an arm around Subaru's neck as they passed a department store's window, effectively making the onmyouji stop.

"For instance, wouldn't that nice dark red hide the blood better?" Fuuma's breath was hot in Subaru's ear. "Not to mention, /he/ used to say you look awfully pretty in red."

Subaru fought down a rush of anger by lighting yet another cigarette (they did calm his nerves, afterall), refusing to so much as twitch as Fuuma's thumb started stroking his neck in lazy circles.

"Did he now?" he asked coldly, exhaling the smoke directly into the young man's face.

"Oh, yes. He said your sister had a much more developed sense of fashion than you ever did."

Without blinking, Subaru pushed Fuuma's hand away roughly and resumed walking. Low laughter followed like a caress, and made him want to grit his teeth. He opted for a second drag off his cigarette instead.

He had gone several blocks before he realized that Fuuma wasn't planning on following him. This was just fine with him, he hadn't exactly been relishing the notion of the smug Dark Kamui being a witness to whatever it was that awaited him when he reached his destination.

Whatever it was that awaited him... at Ueno Park.

The tree was no longer whispering.

There was fresh blood on his trenchcoat now, still wet to the touch and slightly warm.

He supposed there was some truth to what Fuuma had said. He really shouldn't be attracting this sort of attention to himself. Seishirou never had.

"Seishirou-san." The words escaped from his lips as his slender fingers trailed to one of the older, dry stains.

He knew the feel of all of those, and their smell. A little like iron, shortly before it rusts. Sometimes, when he ran his nails across those old stains, tiny flakes would break off and drift away, the way sakura petals might drift on the breeze.

Slowly and not without reluctance, Subaru slid the white coat off his own shoulders. He gathered the bloody cloth between his hands tightly. He closed his eyes, allowing memories to sweep through him, memories so old and distant that he might have believed they weren't his at all, and others so very new, as sharp as the slightly rusty smell of blood on his coat.

He should have felt something. He wanted to feel something.

But he was empty.

The last of his tears had been shed that day at Rainbow Bridge.

He sensed rather than heard Fuuma's approach. It was logical, he supposed, since he was a Dragon of Earth now. He was still holding the coat, but his arms went slack. He turned cold, impassive eyes towards Fuuma.

"Did you want something?" he asked in a flat voice.

"As in, /wish/? Me?" This seemed to strike the young man as funny, and he let out a slow, low laugh, a laugh that fell like velvet on Subaru's ears. "Why, yes, I do, several things, in fact. Thank you for asking. No one ever does."

Subaru ignored him, although he had to admit that this was getting steadily more difficult as the hours passed.

Fuuma's laughter subsided abruptly and he studied Subaru intently, his golden eyes suddenly very bright and clear above the rim of his glasses. They were a predator's eyes, those, when he allowed them to shine that way.

"We're not really so very different, or at least, the circumstances that shaped us aren't. No one ever bothered to ask /you/ what you wanted either." He tilted his head to one side, the half-smile playing on his lips again "Except for me, that is."

Subaru's hand drifted up involuntarily. He stopped himself before touching /his/ eye. "Seishirou-san did ask, once, at the end."

Fuuma smirked openly now. "Oh yes. But your answer didn't make much difference, did it?"

The onmyouji didn't answer. His fingers twitched slightly; he wanted a cigarette.

"And we have other things in common too," he continued in that other insolent, amused tone. "We're both high-school dropouts, for instance. We both have dead parents. And a dead sister, as well."

"Yes, well, I didn't kill mine."

"Oh? Didn't you?"

Fuuma's eyes met and held his gaze, and the onmyouji wondered if it was just wishes that the Dark Kamui could see. He wondered if he could see beyond his dead eyes.

"Is this your idea of bonding, or is there another point to this?" he finally asked.

"Oh, there's a point." Fuuma said, closing the distance between them with a fluid, feline grace. "I thought you might need this, after servicing your new sweetheart."

Fuuma pushed a bundle he'd been holding towards him. Subaru looked down at it but made no move to take it.

"Didn't anyone object to you taking that?"

"Of course not. They were too busy worrying about the ceiling collapsing over their heads."

So /that/ was why he had stayed behind.

Fuuma actually rolled his eyes in exasperation. "You might as well put it on. Yours is ruined now anyway."

"Whatever."

Subaru shrugged and thrust his white coat at Fuuma, taking the bundle from his hands. He slid the new coat on, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu. Except that wasn't precisely right. That other coat had been a bright cherry red, while this one was a deep crimson. Blood would, indeed, be hidden in its color.

"Give me the other one."

"What, this one?" Fuuma looked mildly surprised "What for?"

He didn't answer. Fuuma studied him for a moment before smirking again.

"Oh. I see." He said, touching one of the patches of dried blood.

Subaru snatched the coat away from him. Fuuma laughed again, that same soft, caressing laughter. Then he reached out and, stepping closer still, straightened Subaru's collar.

"He was right." He whispered by Subaru's ear. "You do look pretty in red."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter I**

Throughout the twenty-five years of his life, Subaru had been witness to the gradual numbing of his emotions. It had begun when he was sixteen years old, shortly after he discovered love. Mere minutes after he had accepted that he was in love, Subaru had experienced betrayal and cruelty at the hands of the object of his affection. Seishirou had, quite literally, torn out his heart and ripped it to shreds.

Subaru had never been the same after that day.

He had retreated inside himself, to a cold place where his wounded heart had lain frozen, but no longer bleeding. He might have stayed there until he'd wasted away, too terrified of the power of his own emotions and of others' ability to hurt them.

But he hadn't been allowed to stay in his cocoon of safe oblivion. His sister had wished that he return, and she had given her life in exchange for that. Seishirou's hand plunging through her chest had been the blow that had forced Subaru back into the world of the living. He had awakened with his wound torn open, and it had never healed. But he had found a way to numb the pain. He had found an obsession strong enough to make him forget how much feeling and loving hurt.

He had found his Wish; and Hokuto had taught him that one should pursue one's Wish, no matter how selfish it was or how unhappy it might make the other parties involved.

And so, Subaru had let himself be consumed by an obsession, by his Wish, to the point that he lost all interest in those surrounding him, and in himself, really. He wasn't happy, but that didn't really matter, for he was certain that he'd had the ability to feel happiness burned out of him.

Nine years later, he had truly believed he was beyond caring, that he was an empty shell that couldn't possibly hold any emotions. He was proven wrong. He had been waiting for Seishirou all those years, he /wanted/ him to come, wanted the sakurazukamori to suck out his life in the same manner that he had sucked out his soul and his heart. There was nothing else for him to take, after all.

Subaru was mistaken. His heart was numb but certainly not dead, and Seishirou had forced him to levels of pain he had not imagined. He had done this by refusing to allow him his Wish. Instead of killing Subaru, Seishirou had forced the younger man to kill him.

And then, Subaru had finally come to understand. His heart had not died, but it had become a pitiful, shriveled thing. Emotions skittered across his senses like razors over raw flesh, leaving in their wake an ever-increasing emptiness.

It was similar to the way he was becoming used to killing.

It wasn't so much that killing became /easier/ during the following days. It was more that each time he was a little number to it.

Although he was loath to hide the inverted stars on the backs of his hands, Subaru had taken to wearing gloves again, to keep his hands free of blood while he killed. It wasn't that he was squeamish about it, it was simply that Seishirou had done it, and so it seemed the proper thing to do.

It also seemed proper that he didn't smoke with the hand that he used to kill, he reflected as he lit up a cigarette.

"Seishirou didn't either," he mused to himself "He killed with his left hand too…"

He was up to two packs a day now, sometimes more.

"I wonder if your habit of smoking after a kill is in any way related to after-sex smoking." Fuuma's soft, low voice sounded amused. Subaru didn't turn around; he'd been fairly sure that the Dark Kamui would show up soon. He always did, after he killed.

He wondered idly how Fuuma always seemed to know when he did it. Was he watching, perhaps, even when he didn't seem to be around?

"Seishirou smoked after sex." Fuuma announced quite cheerfully.

That got him to turn around. It wasn't anger precisely; it was an emotion he couldn't quite classify.

Those golden eyes were very bright, and that insolent, lop-sided grin was in full force.

Perhaps he was simply becoming too much a shadow to recognize anger. But he certainly recognized the sudden urge to slap the smirk off Fuuma's face.

Fuuma merely widened his smile. He looked for a moment as if he was about to burst out laughing.

"Well, he did," he said matter-of-factly "I would expect /you/ to know that as well as I."

It wasn't entirely Subaru's fault that he was smoking so much lately.

"I mean, I would be terribly disappointed to learn that Seishirou hadn't obliged a pretty sixteen year-old with raging hormones. Not to mention…" Fuuma stepped close enough that his breath tickled Subaru's face. "A twenty-five year-old virgin would be an awfully sad thing. I think I would feel compelled to do something about that."

"And you do love to fuck the innocents, don't you?"

"You're hardly anyone's description of an innocent, Subaru. Seishirou fucked you over in more ways than one."

Subaru raised his cigarette to his lips. Fuuma allowed him one drag before reaching out and taking the cigarette from him, his fingers lingering over Subaru's lips an instant longer than necessary.

The Kamui of the Dragons of Earth had the rather irritating habit of taking halfway-smoked cigarettes right from Subaru's mouth, taking one or two drags on it, and invariably throwing away the remainder. This meant that when Fuuma was around, Subaru went through twice as many cigarettes as he normally would have. Add to this the fact that every other comment out of Fuuma managed to set his teeth on edge so that he /needed/ the calming effects of nicotine, and it was a wonder that he wasn't up to /three/ packs a day.

Why Fuuma got to him so easily was a small mystery in itself, considering that Subaru couldn't manage to muster up any sort of strong emotion about anything else these days.

Still, his irritation (and anything else Fuuma's antics might make him feel) was locked away in a small shadowed corner of his soul. It was a safe place, surrounded by layers of safe indifference and dull pain. It was the same place where he'd kept his love for Seishirou, the place where his need and desire had remained tucked away for almost a decade before the sakurazukamori had seen fit to rip them out again. And even if Fuuma managed to prod and poke the cracks in Subaru's walls, what managed to escape the prison of his heart was dull and pale, merely the shadow of the things he managed to keep locked inside.

And so, Subaru had no trouble watching impassively as Fuuma took a long drag off the cigarette, his golden eyes falling closed as he inhaled the smoke, the light from a streetlight defining the chiseled features in sharp detail. The dark Kamui exhaled slowly through slightly parted lips.

However irritating and... Insolently /enticing/... Fuuma might be, he was not Seishirou. His hold over Subaru was based entirely on a consequential accident of fate: he was the Kamui of the Dragons of Earth and Subaru was one of his Angels. There was nothing really tying them together, no tight bonds of blood and love, no mysterious bets made amongst falling sakura. There no marks anywhere on Subaru's body that called out Fuuma's name incessantly.

"Are you sure you don't Wish it were otherwise?" Fuuma's voice was low enough that Subaru would have had trouble picking up the words had he not been inches away from the young man. His eyes remained closed.

"That /what/ were otherwise?"

Fuuma opened his eyes slowly. They were the clear predator's eyes again. The look he gave Subaru almost sent a shock of remembrance through his mind. He had seen that look in the dark Kamui's eyes before.

_/Why does he look like Seishirou-san?/  
>Because you Wish for it to be so./ _

Fuuma smiled then, a mixture of his usual sensual, taunting smirk, and something else, something darker, more knowing. He allowed the unfinished cigarette slide from his long fingers before catching Subaru's left hand and raising it to his mouth. His eyes never left Subaru's as he caught the tip of one of the glove's bloody fingers between his teeth. Fuuma tipped his head back and to one side, pulling the glove away. He let the glove fall from his mouth in the same way that he had let the cigarette fall from his hand.

"I think you know." He answered finally, tracing the inverted sakurazukamori star on the back of Subaru's bare hand.

Subaru allowed the contact for a second or two more, long enough so that when he pulled his hand from Fuuma's grip it didn't seem like his words or actions had fazed him. He knelt to retrieve his glove from where it had fallen at Fuuma's feet.

As he straightened, his mismatched gaze met Fuuma's golden eyes without betraying the slightest emotion.

And yet… there was something, wasn't there? Something stirred as Fuuma's eyes bore into his. There was anger, he recognized that easily enough now… but something else too. Something similar to the first stirring of hunger. Something he didn't want to acknowledge, but those eyes saw it, knew what it was. Those eyes promised to ease that hunger.

Anger, hunger… and hatred too. Because this smirking young man had no right to invade his walls of indifference.

He turned and strode away. Fuuma's laughter followed him.

Subaru didn't see Fuuma again until the following evening, when he was leaving Seishirou's old house.

"Have a nice night at work, honey."

Subaru stopped in his tracks at the taunting voice and turned around. Fuuma stepped out of the shadows beneath the camellias and the sakura tree.

"Shall I wait up for you? Have some dinner waiting for you?" The young man continued with an amused smile as he approached Subaru, stopping less than a foot away from him.

"Can I borrow your toothpaste? I've forgotten mine." The voice, sensual to begin with, was loaded with suggestive nuances. As if he wasn't asking for toothpaste at all.

"What are you talking about?" Subaru finally asked against his better judgement.

"Oh, I'm staying here tonight." Fuuma's eyes sparkled with dark amusement. And something else too.

"Doesn't the dark Kamui have anything /better/ to do?" Subaru allowed contempt to enter his tone.

Fuuma shrugged and grinned. "Not really, no. I'm bored."

_/So you find this amusing, do you?/ _

Subaru paused to take out and light a cigarette. It bought him time before having to react. Finally he shrugged.

"Do whatever you want, I don't care." He turned and began to walk away. He paused halfway to the gate, and called back without turning around. "Oh, and /Fuuma/, stay out of my bedroom."

Fuuma laughed. "Is that so?"

If Subaru had looked back then, he would have seen the flash of anger in Fuuma's eyes.

Subaru returned home well after midnight. "Home" meaning the house where Seishirou had been born. It wasn't his, really… but he didn't really feel like he belonged anywhere else anymore, so he might as well call it that.

There was no sign of Fuuma anywhere that he could see. He wondered if the dark Kamui had gotten bored enough to leave. It seemed too much to hope for. Most likely, Fuuma had decided it would be amusing to invade Subaru's bedroom. Precisely /because/ he had told him not to.

What had made him say that? He knew Fuuma well enough to know that telling him /not/ to do something was probably the quickest way to get him to do the opposite. Fuuma was the sort of person that breaks rules simply to prove he can.

He had reached his door by then. He pulled cold indifference round him like armor, or maybe more like a warm coat in a winter storm. He walked inside and flicked on the lights…

…and found the room empty.

Exactly as he'd left it. It was obvious that no one had been in here.

Subaru paused by the door for just a moment while he processed the surprise. He walked to the bed slowly, and took off the red trenchcoat — why was he wearing a coat Fuuma had given him? — and laid it on the bed. He tucked the almost empty pack of cigarettes into the back pocket of his pants before pulling his shirt over his head and letting it fall on top of the coat. He wanted to smoke before going to bed, wanted to feel the cool night breeze from the garden on his bare skin as he did so.

He never made it to the garden.

Walking down the hallway, he noticed that the door to one of the spare bedrooms was slightly ajar. He paused as he was about to pass it, and stood there for several moments, listening to the sounds of the house around him, before stepping to the threshold and looking inside. It took another half-minute or so for his eyes to adjust to the deeper darkness within the room.

He had found Fuuma.

His clothes were strewn haphazardly on the floor by the bed, completely ignoring even the chair that stood against a wall. Fuuma himself lay sprawled on his back in the wide bed, his eyes closed and his chest rising and falling in the rhythm of sleep. The scant light drifting in through the door behind Subaru chiseled the muscles on his smooth, bare torso. Subaru's eyes followed the line of his stomach. The blankets were pushed dangerously low on his hips, enough to make it clear that Fuuma wasn't wearing anything more on his lower half than he was above.

He stared. He couldn't help it. No matter how irritating he was, Fuuma was also beautiful, Subaru would have had to be blind or dead to deny that. He was no longer half-blind, and despite his own assumptions, perhaps he wasn't really half dead either. And in the dark, quiet blanket of the dark, he lowered his guard, allowed the walls around him to crumble a little, enough to recognize that first stirring of hunger as desire, and to realize that it wasn't so easy to contain as he'd like to think.

Subaru leaned against the doorframe, his hands tightening into fists at his sides. Perhaps he trembled a little as he fought to push down his emotions.

"If you're going to go, then go," the silence shattered like glass under the weight of Fuuma's voice "But if you're just going to stand there, why don't you just come in here and give me a cigarette? I know you have them on you. You were going to smoke one outside."

Fuuma opened his eyes. They caught the light and shone golden, almost as bright as a cat's, as he fixed Subaru with an unwavering stare. It was impossible to read the expression on his face.

He could have left. He could have turned, walked out, and closed the door. He could have gone to the garden and let the cold air scour his skin as he denied what Fuuma awoke in him, both desire and anger bordering on hate. It would have been a simple thing really, afterall, he had spent his life denying his emotions, his dreams, his needs.

But he didn't. That night, Subaru had finally grown tired of living in denial.

He pushed himself off the door's frame and walked slowly and deliberately into the room. Without asking or waiting for an invitation, he sat on the bed at Fuuma's side, and wordlessly offered the younger man a cigarette.

Fuuma's eyes shone even brighter, as if lit from within, as he accepted the cigarette without breaking eye contact. This close to him, Subaru could see a hint of the insolent smirk playing on the corners of his lips.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter II**

"Got a light?"

Fuuma's light tone was at odds with the way his eyes bore into Subaru's as he raised the unlit cigarette to his lips. Wordlessly, the onmyouji took the lighter out of his pocket.

Fuuma propped himself up a little against the bed's headboard, but he made no real attempt to meet Subaru halfway as the onmyouji leaned over him to light the cigarette resting easily on his lips.

"I wasn't sure if you'd actually come in here or not," the young man admitted as he exhaled the first drag of smoke. They were facing each other now, Subaru sitting at an angle on the bed, Fuuma sitting up just enough to make smoking easier.

"Is the dark Kamui actually admitting to an insecurity?" Subaru asked, amused despite himself.

Fuuma smiled smugly. "Of course not. I know you /wanted/ to. I just wasn't sure you'd allow yourself to do it."

Subaru didn't bother to deny that. Fuuma was obviously aware of his attraction to him, and Subaru wasn't really prepared to examine it just now. And as for why he had come in, he didn't know what Fuuma was up to, but he had to admit he wanted to find out.

"What would you have done if I hadn't?" he asked finally.

Fuuma held his gaze for a moment.

"Jacked off and gone to sleep." He finally answered with a slight shrug. He let his head fall back, exposing his throat as he closed his eyes. "I'm glad you did, though. I wanted a smoke."

There was silence for a moment as Fuuma parted his lips and exhaled a second long, thin trail of cigarette smoke. His eyes remained closed and for a moment it seemed that he had dismissed Subaru's presence at the side of the bed. When he spoke again, his voice came out almost a purr.

"Besides…" he opened his eyes and fixed Subaru with a shockingly direct gaze. "I thought you might like to watch."

Fuuma let the words hang in the air for an instant before sliding his own right hand down across his stomach in a languorously slow motion. His smile widened as his hand disappeared beneath the sheet barely covering his hips. He shifted slightly, like a cat stretching in the sun. Subaru could just see the motions of Fuuma's hand reflected in the muscles of his wrist and lower arm. The air in the room began to thicken with the sound of increasingly heavy breathing.

Fuuma let out something suspiciously like a moan.

"He liked to watch." He said, his voice, though husky, was still amused. And the words still grated on Subaru's ears. He knew who Fuuma meant. "Did he ever watch /you/ do this?"

"That's none of your concern." Subaru was annoyed at the raw quality in his voice. He cleared his throat, forcing his eyes away from Fuuma's and purposely avoiding whatever was going on beneath the sheet. His eyes landed on the cigarette still between Fuuma's lips.

"Maybe you were too /nice/ a boy back then…"

Fuuma's unoccupied hand was on Subaru's leg now, just above his knee. Subaru ignored it. He concentrated on the cigarette.

"But now? Would you have liked to entertain him?" His left hand kneaded its way further up Subaru's leg, towards the inside of his thigh. "The way I'm entertaining you."

Slowly and deliberately, Subaru reached out and took the cigarette from Fuuma's mouth. Fuuma attempted to nip at his fingers. The onmyouji raised the cigarette to his own lips, ignoring the slightly fevered light in Fuuma's eyes as he looked at him. The smoke filled his lungs, and he felt his muscles relaxing.

"Do you miss him?" Fuuma's hand passed lightly over Subaru's crotch, nothing more than a teasing tickle through cloth. They were sitting close enough so that Fuuma didn't have to alter his position against the headboard to reach the waist of Subaru's pants. He slid cool, long fingers between the fabric and the onmyouji's bare skin. Subaru lifted the cigarette to his lips for a second drag, and Fuuma chuckled slightly. He withdrew his hand and settled instead on undoing the button of the pants and sliding the zipper down. Perhaps it was that he was doing it one-handed, or perhaps it was merely staged clumsiness, but the process took quite a bit longer than one might have expected. By the time Subaru's pants were open, Fuuma had somehow managed to "accidentally" rub his hand against Subaru enough to partially arouse him.

"I miss him." Fuuma continued. The sheet covering his hips barely managed to remain in place as his right hand moved more vigorously. Fuuma's half-lidded gaze caught his, Subaru realized it was impossible for him to look away from those eyes.

"I used to love the way he fucked me."

The words escaped from Fuuma's lips in a slow, sensual drawl, but their meaning, leaving behind veiled taunts, hit Subaru like a kick in the stomach. He drew in a sharp breath as Fuuma wrapped his fingers around his partly aroused length. Fuuma squeezed briefly, then loosened his hold as he slid his hand lazily up and down Subaru's shaft.

Fuuma shifted position slightly again, raising his hips a bit. The movement succeeded in finally dislodging the sheet draped over him. Very deliberately, he looked away from Subaru's mismatched eyes, letting his own stray down towards his right hand. The smile played on his lips as he ground two fingers against the base of his shaft, sure that Subaru's eyes had followed his. He bent his knees and spread his legs, his movements slow and graceful, meant to trap an observer's attention. Subaru's attention in this case.

With a last, lingering caress, Fuuma withdrew his hand from Subaru's lap. Subaru raised the half-forgotten cigarette to his lips once again, it helped steady his nerves. His eyes were once again impassive when he looked up into Fuuma's face. As if he had been waiting for their gazes to meet, Fuuma chose that moment to lift his left hand to his mouth. Without ever letting up the attentions on his own erection, Fuuma proceeded to lick and suckle each of his fingers. His eyes, clear and feral, remained locked on the onmyouji's as he reached again for Subaru's cock. This time however, he didn't wrap his entire hand around it or stroked it. He simply rubbed the tips of his middle and index fingers, slick with saliva, over Subaru's tip in a maddeningly slow motion.

Subaru continued to hold the now-forgotten cigarette between his fingers as it slowly burned towards the filter. Fuuma continued to rub his fingers against his tip, every once in a while he would caress more of Subaru's length, but it was never more than teasing, and the pleasure it brought was also agonizing in what it denied. Subaru wanted to close his eyes, whether in an attempt to shut out the sensations or to be lost in them, he didn't really know, but all the same, he found that he couldn't. Fuuma's hips were beginning to sway rhythmically, rising and falling, pushing back against the motions of his hand. Every movement he made was charged to bursting with the over-powering eroticism that was always hinted at by even his most casual actions. The sensuousness came naturally to him, as if it were inscribed in his flesh. And yet, even as Fuuma allowed sensations and pleasure to sweep him their wake, there was an obvious self-awareness in the way he touched himself, a precise and tantalizing quality to the way his long fingers encircled his own erection. The almost studied abandon to how he began to thrust slowly into his hand, made it achingly clear that the young man was indulging himself in a spectacle solely for the Sumeragi's benefit.

The purpose of the show, however, was not pleasure.

Pleasure was a means to an end, and the end was just as much as taunt as any of Fuuma's carefully studied impertinence. Fuuma allowed Subaru to see him inexorably and obviously approaching orgasm, but he denied Subaru his own release even as he gave the older man a tantalizing taste of it.

The fingers teasing the onmyouji into further arousal were too knowing, too deliberate. The pleasure they brought was too carefully contained, just enough to make Subaru grip the sheets until his knuckles hurt and make him bite his lips to keep from moaning, but not enough to satisfy the hunger they awoke. Subaru could feel the pressure building, he could feel it begin to escape painfully under Fuuma's attentions, but he knew that this would give him no release. The smile tugging at Fuuma's mouth, the dark fire in the golden eyes as they met his again, told him that Fuuma knew it too.

"He never... let me... play like this for long..." The words escaped Fuuma's lips amidst low moans, they /were/ half moans themselves. The young man ran his tongue over his lips, his breathing was fast and somewhat harsh as his rubbed his palm over the wetness that had begun to escape Subaru's cock. He grasped the erection in a somewhat loose hold and began to slide his slick hand up and down the onmyouji's length. Subaru found himself straining not to react, but his hips thrust into Fuuma's hand of their accord. And yet, it was not enough. Fuuma's hand was too slow, too lazy; his hold was just a tad too loose. It was obvious that the reason was not a lack of experience or knowledge, but quite the opposite.

Fuuma was quite skillfully bringing Subaru to a razor-sharp precipice, while never really pulling him over the edge.

Fuuma's half-closed eyes were still on Subaru, but they no longer seemed a feline's clear and sharp gaze. They glazed now, shinning feverishly as his head fall back slowly, his breathing harsh and fast. With fleeting clarity, Subaru wondered how it was possible for Fuuma, so obviously close to orgasm, to retain enough control over himself to not falter or lose control of the hand teasing /his/ erection so precisely.

"By now... he would have slapped my hand away... he would be inside me... fucking me so hard that I'd forget how to do anything but scream his name..."

Fuuma's eyes finally closed, his breath came in loud gasps; he separated his knees even more, straightening his legs out before him, the muscles of his lean stomach tightened convulsively. Subaru found that his mouth was suddenly dry, he couldn't tear his eye from the spectacle of Fuuma, moving as he really /was/ writhing under an unseen lover.

"Oh... god... Subaru... don't you want to... fuck me... " Fuuma arched his back, his right hand pumping even harder on himself even as the hand on Subaru's cock finally slipped out of control. He squeezed the older man's erection more out of reflex than anything else, his hand finally rougher and faster. Fuuma's touch was no longer a sensuous taunt, but now it was too out of control and sloppy to do Subaru any more good than before.

"...The way Seishirou..." Fuuma's skin glistened with sweat as his body strained and arched. "...would /fuck/ us both..." His voice caught for second, and then Fuuma gasped and let out a moan that became a scream as he finally came and lost all control, semen spilling over his hand an onto the visibly convulsing muscles of his stomach.

It was almost enough to make Subaru come as well.

It seemed like a very long time since Subaru had felt anything like this, and his automatic reaction was to shield himself from it, to resist. Fuuma's hand had gone slack on his erection and he found himself shaking far too much to finish himself off. Instead, he took several deep breaths to steady himself. The cigarette had burned itself out in his hand some while ago, so he light himself a new one, closing his eyes as he raised it to his mouth. After a few drags he found some measure of control and his breathing eased somewhat.

He was still, however, painfully hard.

Subaru closed his eyes. In the silence, he realized that Fuuma must be recovering from his orgasm, for /his/ breathing had eased somehow. As if to confirm it, the younger man's hand stirred in Subaru's lap, the fingers grazing fleetingly over Subaru's length, as if he was merely checking that it was still aroused. Fuuma's laughed then, a low, delighted laugh breaking the silence.

"The cigarette is usually for /after/ you're done, Subaru-kun." Fuuma's voice had reverted to his usual slow, taunting drawl.

"Forgive me for assuming you had no interest in finishing what you started." Subaru's voice too, was no different from usual, just as cold and emotionless as ever.

Fuuma grinned at him. "Depends entirely on what you wish, Subaru."

Subaru didn't answer. He wasn't about to /ask/ Fuuma to finish, afterall. He held out the pack of cigarettes to the younger man.

"Ah, no thanks, I don't really feel like it yet. Smoking hand's all sticky. Should clean it off first."

Fuuma held Subaru's gaze for a moment, his eyes sparkling with amusement. After a moment he brought his right hand to his lips, pausing for a moment to allow what he meant to do to sink in. He began to lick his hand free of semen. For some reason, Subaru thought of a cat grooming itself. An extremely smug cat. Fuuma's eyes held his the entire time, and his left hand, still on Subaru's lap, began to wander. His hand glided down over Subaru's shaft, pausing to fondle his balls for a moment or so, pushing them lightly up against the older man's erection, before moving on to rubbing small circles into the skin directly below them. Subaru was somewhat startled when he heard a moan escape his own lips.

"Enjoying yourself?" Fuuma paused in the act of licking the palm of his hand. He grinned wickedly as an idea struck him.

He sat up, reaching out to rub the fingers of his right hand on Subaru's lips. It was no more than a fleeting caress, which continued over Subaru's cheek and down towards the nape of his neck. Fuuma began to draw Subaru's face towards his slowly.

"You'd like a taste of me wouldn't you?" He murmured as their faces were barely an inch apart, but making no effort to close the distance.

They remained like that for a few moments, barely breathing, poised on the brink of a kiss. Until Subaru turned his face and pulled away.

Fuuma laughed and let go of his neck. His other hand, however, continued what it had been doing all along. Fuuma's fingers were back to teasing and fondling Subaru's erection.

"How very disappointing." He murmured in amusement.

"I thought whores didn't kiss on the lips" Subaru answered coldly.

Fuuma shrugged, unfazed. "It depends. You let /him/ kiss you, didn't you?"

"Well, you're not Seishirou-san." He answered, ignoring the many insulting ways to interpret Fuuma's comment.

"Oh, I didn't mean /him/ this time. I meant /another/ little whore." There was an unspoken, dark challenge in Fuuma's golden eyes now. Subaru stared back levelly for an instant.

"You aren't Kamui either, /Fuuma/." He answered in as cold and contemptuous a voice as possible. "You're just sick."

Fuuma's eyes flashed angrily at the mention of his name, but it subsided quickly, and he let out a taunting laugh.

"Oh, /I/ am sick?" He gave Subaru's erection one last tantalizing caress, running his finger over Subaru's tip before withdrawing his hand. "Fine then. Have it your way."

In one smooth motion, Fuuma got to his feet. He slid into his pants gracefully, making as much a spectacle of that as from anything else. He then picked up the rest of his clothes and headed for the door. He didn't look back at Subaru until he was past the threshold, the usual smirk plain on his lips.

"I'm glad you know what you want. Sakurazukamori."

He left without waiting for an answer.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter III**

After Fuuma walked out the door, Subaru stayed in the room long enough to finish his cigarette. In his mind's eye he could still see Fuuma arched back, a loud moan escaping his lips as he came. Subaru ran a hand lightly over the wet sheet. It was just like Fuuma to leave him a mess like this.

As he finished his cigarette, he could no longer feel the ghost of Fuuma's touch on him, but his body still ached for it with a painful intensity. Funny, how his mind could be this numb while his body was this aroused.

He got up and headed out of the room, pausing for a moment on the threshold.

_"I'm glad you know what you want. Sakurazukamori."_

Subaru flicked the cigarette stub away in irritation and headed for the bathroom.

He hadn't bothered to zip up his pants, so stripping took less time than usual. He stopped in the act of stepping to the shower as the mirror caught his attention. He met his own mismatched eyes, emerald green and honey brown shinning at him from the other side of the mirror.

Subaru could never hold his own gaze for very long. To others he presented a cold, impassive façade, but those eyes... those eyes were the only ones that seared him straight to the heart. The only ones he could never hide from.

He turned on the shower as he got inside. Cold water made wet trails down his slender frame.

His hand wandered across his chest, down his stomach, and then lower still. He was still aroused, and he knew it wasn't going to simply go away, cold shower or not.

He closed his eyes as he grasped his erection. His hand was clumsy and unsure at first. In the numb void that his life had become, there was hardly ever any need for him to do this. His nights, both sleepless and not, had been filled for years by dreams inspired by his encounters with Seishirou; but not any more. He had become as seemingly empty of desire as of anything else.

He needed those dreams now, he needed a fantasy. Physical stimulation was not enough, or rather, he was no longer able to make it enough. When he was sixteen, his mind would conjure up Seishirou's honey brown eyes as he imagined the older man's hands and lips touching his body.

_"You'd like a taste of me wouldn't you?"_

The water trailing down his body could have been caresses, the hand stroking him could have been someone else's. But the face behind his eyes wasn't the one he had expected.

Bright, golden eyes instead of honey brown, that held the promise of wishes, and something darker too.

Seishirou had been like a greek sculpture, beautiful but cold, with an enigmatic smile and eyes that revealed nothing. Fuuma's, on the other hand, revealed too much. His voice might be like a smooth, cool caress, but his eyes held fire.

If contact with Seishirou had turned Subaru to ice, what would touching the fire that was Fuuma do to him?

A strangled moan escaped Subaru's lips as semen spilled over his hand. The image of Fuuma arching his back, writhing as he brought them both to the brink, was still in Subaru's mind.

Fuuma, abandoning himself to orgasm in a way that Subaru could no longer match.

Then again, had he ever truly let go?

Arms encircled him from behind, pulling him back against a tall, strong body.

"Subaru-kun... just /what/ have you been up to tonight?"

He turned quickly, a blush suffusing his cheeks as he came face to face with the man behind him. For a moment confusion made him dizzy, for some reason he had been surprised to find that it really /was/ Seishirou here with him.

The older man took Subaru's hand in his, and slowly slid off the black glove covering it. Subaru's blush deepened, and shame replaced the last lingering trace of confusion.

There was semen on his hand.

"Is this yours, Subaru-kun?"

"Se... Seishirou-san, I..."

"Shhh," the fingers of Seishirou's other hand over his lips silenced whatever he had been about to say. "Of course it's yours. I can tell. It was on his hands too, and I knew then that it was yours."

Subaru attempted to step back, but the grip on his wrist tightened, and the older man pulled him into an embrace. Subaru's body tensed, just like it always did at first when Seishirou touched him.

"My silly little Subaru-kun, why do you even bother to try? Fuuma can't give you back what you lost, because I'm the only one that can."

Subaru whimpered as Seishirou massaged the back of his neck in slow circles.

"How...?"

"Because he told me himself. He said that your true Wish is something that only I can grant."

Subaru's hands tightened into fists at his sides and he bit back a sob. He didn't understand why, but hearing those words made him feel lost.

"I forgive you. I don't care if you want to play with Fuuma."

"You... don't /care/?"

"Of course not, Subaru-kun. I can share my toys."

It wasn't clear who he had just called a toy; Subaru or Fuuma... or both. Subaru suspected it was later.

Seishirou laughed, low and amused. "Did you really believe I give a damn who you want to fuck? You really are cute, Subaru-kun."

Seishirou tilted his head upwards, almost as he were about to kiss him. Subaru saw himself reflected in Seishirou's eye - _What happened to his other eye?_ -. A teenage boy, easily pretty enough to pass for a girl, dressed in a red trench coat and tight fitting black body suit.

Funny, why hadn't he noticed the bandage over one of his eyes?

"Seishirou-san..."

The older man was no longer holding him, and without the support, Subaru sank to his knees, burying his face in his hands.

"Really, Subaru, /what/ did you expect him to say?"

Subaru drew in a sharp breath at the sound of the new voice. Although "new" was hardly a proper word to describe his twin sister's voice.

"That... he loves me. That's all I ever..."

"Loves you?" Hokuto took hold off his hands, pulling them from his face. She was kneeling on the floor in front of him. They were in the living room of their apartment in Tokyo. "Do you think you deserve his love Subaru? Or mine?"

He was speechless. Was he imagining a hint of scorn in her voice? Her smile was the same as ever... or was it?

"I thought you did. I thought you deserved it more than anyone. There was someone else that needed it more, and I turned my back on him for you. I gave my life for you."

Hokuto was no longer smiling.

"Hokuto-chan, I..."

"As it turns out, I wasted my life for you. I wanted you to live, and look what you've become."

She was standing over him now, her arms crossed beneath her breasts. "You're so ungrateful, Subaru. Wanting to get from Fuuma what is only Sei-chan's to give."

The yumemi watched the scene unfold before him. For a second, when the dream-Hokuto mentioned someone that had needed her love, Kudzuki Kakyou had felt his heart beating wildly.

It wasn't that he had actually believed, even for a second, that it had been the real Hokuto saying that... but... if a product of Subaru's subconscious spoke about him... it must mean that /she/ had told her brother about them...

"No, I can't let myself believe that," he whispered to himself. "It means nothing. I can alter dreams. My own desires projected on an unshielded mind..."

The ethereal young man turned his back on the twins and the apartment faded around him, replaced by the endless labyrinth of screens of his dreamscape. His paper prison.

He wasn't surprised to find someone waiting for him.

"Back from visiting your girlfriend, Kakyou?" The Kamui of the Dragons of Earth was leaning indolently against one of the screens. "Don't you get tired of the whole look but don't touch deal?"

"I wouldn't expect you to understand it. Seeing as how you subscribe to the 'I see, I want, I take' mentality."

The young man stepped closer to Kakyou. "While /you/ subscribe to the 'I'll just spy on her brother's dreams and jerk off behind a screen' mentality?"

The slap hit the Kamui squarely across the mouth. The golden eyes blazed in for a moment, but if it had been anger, it was lost in gales of laughter.

"Feisty tonight, I see. Maybe I should have come straight to you instead of playing with our new Angel."

"Your new toy disappoints you? How sad. And here I thought you might actually forget about me."

"Forget about you?" long fingers combed through Kakyou's long hair, then came to rest softly on his cheek. "Hardly. I could never forget /you/."

"I'm touched." Despite the scorn in his voice, Kakyou allowed his eyes to fall closed as the Kamui bent to nuzzle at his neck.

"...And Subaru is not disappointing in the least." The voice was husky and tickled the yumemi's ear. "In fact, he's quite entertaining. He'll be a rather fun playmate."

"Then why are you here?" Kakyou's eyes remained closed, and reigned himself in from wrapping his arms around the young man's neck as the Kamui pressed their bodies closer together. "Or could it be that Subaru doesn't /want/ to play with you?"

"Oh, he wants to play. He just needs to realize that big boys like him don't need to ask anyone's permission." A hand tangled in Kakyou's hair, and his head was pulled back. The Kamui licked his way down the exposed neck, dropping a kiss into the hollow of the yumemi's throat.

"In the meantime, I can always play with you, Kakyou." Hands wandered to the opening of Kakyou's robe as the young man called Fuuma purred against the smooth, white skin.

_Monou Fuuma_ was a name Kakyou never called him by.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter IV**

Fuuma sank back at Kakyou's side, among the tangle of the yumemi's robes and his own haphazardly strewn clothing.

"When did you dream up the bedding?" he asked after a minute or so, his voice still a little breathless.

Kakyou let out a dry laugh. "Contrary to what you might think, laying on my back on cold floors is not something I find particularly amusing."

"Could've fooled me..." Fuuma purred, reaching out to tangle his hand in Kakyou's long hair. He sighed in temporary contentment, his eyes slowly drifting shut.

He always needed a few minutes to recover after sex.

_'Just for a little while... I can stay here for a little while...'_

He knew Kakyou was watching him, he could feel the catlike eyes on him. It didn't matter for the moment. For just a moment, he could lie back with his eyes closed and catch his breath.

_/"You /can/ stay, you know. Just to catch your breath, of course."/  
>too tired to leave anyway just this once nothing's going to happen if I stay./_

Fuuma frowned slightly, his hand still tangled in Kakyou's hair.

_/And when his eyes drifted open he found an arm draped over his waist, and a warm body pressed against his back. Words were being whispered in his ear./_

Fuuma sat up, his movements brisker than was usual for him. He grabbed his pants and pulled them on, for once not bothering to do it as if he were the star of his own personal porn film.

"You're leaving then." It was a statement, not a question, and Kakyou's voice was flat as he delivered it.

"I want a smoke." Fuuma replied with a hint of a smirk.

Kakyou glanced at him unconcernedly. "You don't smoke."

"I don't?"

"A drag or two to get under the skin of whoever happens to be sakurazukamori doesn't qualify you as a nicotine addict. It just makes you annoying."

Nevertheless, a box of cigarettes materialized in Kakyou's hands.

"/Real/ cigarettes." Fuuma protested as Kakyou made as if to hand them to him.

The yumemi merely shrugged gracefully. "I don't see the difference."

"I wouldn't expect you to." Fuuma replied as he got to his feet.

"They're no less real than what we just did, and you seemed to enjoy that just fine." Kakyou continued in a bored tone of voice. "Why don't you just say you can't stand the thought of actually /staying/ with someone you just fucked?"

Fuuma didn't reply. The air crackled around him as he collected the energy necessary to rip a hole through the wall of Kakyou's paper prison.

"Sweet dreams, Kakyou." He said in his usual slow drawl, his hand lazily tracing the contour of Kakyou's jaw.

With that, he left the dreamscape, emerging at the side of Kakyou's bed, right where he'd entered.

The silence was interrupted only by the blipping monitors and Kakyou's light, even breathing. Fuuma looked down at the comatose yumemi for a long time before walking out of the room.

The void that the Dark Kamui had ripped in the dreamscape's fabric didn't simply banish after he left. It seemed to harden around the edges and then contract, closing quickly but gradually. Much the way a bloody scar might harden and then close, except much faster.

Kakyou wondered briefly what it must be like, to know you left scars in your wake the way the Kamui of the Dragons of Earth did. Perhaps that wasn't entirely fair. The seventeen year old had as much potential to heal as to scar.

And some types of healing left horrible scars.

Kakyou glanced down at the pack of cigarettes in his hand. Thoughtfully, he tapped one out of the box. A lighter appeared in his hand, and he lit the cigarette. He held it delicately between his slender fingers, studying the way the edge burned as the smoke rose up.

"/Real/ cigarettes? Do I even know what they smell like?"

Not first hand, of course. His knowledge of that, as of so much else, came from second hand experience. In this case, it came from nine years of spying in on Sumeragi Subaru's dreams in the hope of catching fleeting glimpses of the onmyouji's dead sister.

The smell of nicotine had come at first from Subaru's memories of Seishirou. Eventually, as the onmyouji became more and more a pale shadow of the boy he had been, the smell had ceased to be a memory of another. And over the past few months, Kakyou had gotten a still sharper knowledge of it, from a source much more immediate. Fuuma's breath never smelled of cigarettes - the real reason Kakyou knew he didn't smoke except as a sometime affectation - but his clothes often did, a silent testimony of the company he kept.

He closed his eyes for a moment and brought the cigarette to his lips, poised to inhale. Instead he wrinkled his nose in distaste. He flicked the cigarette away, and both it and the lingering smell disappeared in the shadows of the dreamscape.

"You were right. It really is a disgusting habit."

Kakyou stood and picked up the discarded robe and slid it around his shoulders, shrugging into it with an unconscious grace. He frowned at the hastily conjured bedding, and the last evidence of what had happened between him and the Dark Kamui vanished.

The seventeen year old Kamui was not the company Kakyou would have chosen. But any company was better than none, and Fuuma's occasional, odd tenderness had proved to be a surprising comfort in Kakyou's otherwise dreary existence. The yumemi had come to almost enjoy the visits, despite Fuuma's often caustic moods and the frequent and spontaneous bursts of desire that just /had/ to be satisfied.

But not this time.

The power to know the future through dreams is a funny, erratic thing. It's always too late when a yumemi sees a vision of the future, but these visions can come minutes or years before the fact. Sometimes they come in bits and pieces, spread out over time. And there's no guarantee that a yumemi will know the reasons for what is seen.

Long before ever laying eyes on the dark, handsome teenager, Kakyou had known that he would meet someone who could make Wishes come. He had also known that this person would promise to grant his.

Recently, however, Kakyou had learned that he would break that promise.

Tonight, Kakyou had been sure that for the first time, Fuuma had meant to stay. The teenager had seemed altogether too content and relaxed laying beside him in the aftermath of sex. And Kakyou was thankful for whatever it was that had darkened the young man's expression and made him change his mind.

The Dark Kamui was the last person he wanted to be spending time with at the moment.

The wind whipped Subaru's coat around him as he paused to light a cigarette. He leaned against the wall of one the buildings adjoining the alley, thinking the night was almost disturbingly quiet. The fact that it was almost 2 in the morning didn't matter in his estimation, and the thought that perhaps what disturbed him was the absence of an amused, taunting drawl breaking the silence of his life never occurred to him.

He smoked in silence for a couple of minutes, finally snubbing out the half-smoked cigarette on the wall he was leaning against. He took off his bloody glove and placed it in the pocket of the red trench coat before pushing himself off the wall and leaving the alley.

It had been almost five nights since the sleeping city seemed quieter and empty. Five nights since nothing and no one had cracked the cold shell of his detachment.

He was beginning to see the truth in Seishirou's long gone words, about there being little difference between a rock and a human being to the Sakurazukamori.

Waiting, Fuuma decided irritably, was the single most excruciatingly mind-numbing experience a human being could be subjected to, either by choice or by force. It wasn't that he had nothing /to do/ while he waited... it was simply that one can never fully be distracted from it. No matter /what/ you do to pass the time, in the back of your mind you always know you're waiting.

It was the uncertainty implicit in waiting that irritated him. Fate and personal history had made Fuuma somewhat obsessive about control. He knew that, in the end, his own destiny was largely out of his hands... which was all the more reason to keep as tight a reign as possible over the details of his life as it approached it's inexorable conclusion. If he was going to be asked to give his life in a cosmic, apocalyptic struggle, he'd be damned if that life wasn't going to be /exactly/ what he wanted it to be.

One could argue (and Kanoe often did, intrusive bitch that she was) that this made him rash, impulsive and extremely fallible. It was true of course. Over the past few months, Fuuma had become what might be best described as addicted to instant gratification. This would have been seemed very unlikely to anyone that had known the young man a mere year ago, but in truth, it wasn't so very strange. Fuuma, was, after all, a teenage boy... and a teenage boy that had spent most of his life putting /his/ need for self-gratification in the back seat while he concentrated on trying to meet unrealistic expectations. It didn't really matter whether this expectations came from an outside source, like his father, his teachers or the memory of a dead mother, or whether he set them himself while trying to fit into molds which he had always felt were too restrictive. No matter how much he repressed himself, he always fell short, he always had this vast sense of insatisfaction, of never being truly sated.

For a long time, Fuuma had known that the walls he'd built around his true self were cracking. He'd known the level of self-denial he imposed on himself would break, and that possibly he would break with it. This had indeed happened.

After all, what boy Fuuma's age, when suddenly finding himself the vessel of incontainable power, wouldn't react precisely as he had, throwing aside rules and conventions and even morality? What seventeen-year-old boy, upon discovering he was virtually an unstoppable force wouldn't automatically assume that he was entitled to satisfy his desires when and where they struck? There was no longer anyone he had to answer to, and as for the one person that might have stopped him... well, Kamui didn't really seem to be trying very hard.

_/"I wouldn't expect you to understand it. Seeing as how you subscribe to the 'I see, I want, I take' mentality."/_

As always, Kakyou's words from five days ago had been scathingly on the mark.

But however impulsive he might be, Fuuma was far from an idiot. He was also uncannily perseptive, and the years of repressing himself had taught him an iron self-control, which he could exercize if the situation required. If the possible rewards were tempting enough.

Fuuma was well aware that this particular game called for patience and a machiavellian scheming of the sort he didn't usually bother with. Which left only /one/ real question...

Was Subaru worth the wait?

_/"Was it worth it? Waiting six years to play your little game with a teenage boy?" he'd asked, no more than mildly curious./ _

_/Seishirou had laughed softly, his fingers trailing across the skin of Fuuma's bare back./ _

_/"Of course. Beautiful young men are always worth it, whether they're the Thirteenth Head of the Sumeragi Clan, or overconfident sluts at the mercy of their hormones."/ _

_/And Fuuma had closed his eyes as the older man's lips grazed the back of his neck and the hands moving over his body became more aggresive; not caring if Seishirou was laughing at him, or using him just as much as he'd used the Sumeragi nine years before./_

_._

_._

_.  
><em>

**Finnito**


End file.
